A. YOUNG'S FLEETING IMAGES

Look. I’ve been reading for a long time. I love reading; short stories, novels, novellas. Even poetry. Because, despite what I used to think, there IS such a thing as good poetry. Edgar Allen Poe wrote it. Dr. Seuss wrote it. Saul Williams writes it.
A. Young does not.
His collection of recent works, Fleeting Images, is a self-published volume of amateur-at-best prose. And I’m being generous. This thing reads like the “Don’t” column of a “Dos and Don’ts of Modern Poetry”. It’s the kind of stuff that makes you want to go into faux-beatnik poetry houses and hurl bricks at the bespectacled dude in the beret, rattling off some garbage about his broken heart or whatever it is people on the verge of being homicide victims rattle off about.
For real.
The work gave me more chuckles than moments of inspiration. Each page was a new poem, full of lines I’ve heard a million times before. Lines that make me roll my eyes so hard, I fear they’ll stay lodged up there, staring at the bottom of my brain.
With the exception of “Last Train Out”, this work needs refined with a capital “REFINED”. Granted, it may be his first try, in which case, it still needs work. But at the moment, there’s something really cool going on with all the adjectives it brings to mind: Phonetically speaking, you’ll hear the word “try” at the beginning of the word “trite”.
How appropriate.